


In-House Funerals

by delimited (eggfish)



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: Funerals, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Inappropriate Humor, Worldbuilding, canon-typical gore and violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:27:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25865119
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggfish/pseuds/delimited
Summary: To die in service to the King Undying is to earn glory for oneself and one's House. The methods in which this is commemorated vary.--Currently featuring the Third, Eighth, and First Houses. Each chapter is an unrelated ficlet.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 18





	1. Florian Thrice

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write some simple gen and mess about with narration so here we are. My worldbuilding is not headcanon, just what I thought would be cool at the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for mentions of murder and suicide in this chapter. (love you Third House!) Has been edited a little bit since publishing.

Third funerals are always closed-casket, because no one wants to have to admit it if they messed up in the heat of battle and turned their cavalier into a pile of fleshy bits. Today the coffin of Florian Thrice, upholstered, embroidered and bejeweled, glides down the lamplit boulevard at the head of the procession; due to the circumstances of the death, and the fact that Thrice's mother is currently in favour with the Throne of Lenses, there has been quite a turnout of mourners. All are bedecked in the deepest hues of their wardrobe, the full range from midnight blue to tyrian, and all are engaged in what Trentham would like to call _comparing intelligence_. Actually mourning at a funeral is considered rather gauche.

Near the back of the crowd there are three exceptions to the rule - not that they don't look the part, not by any means. The girl in the middle wears a strapless violet dress that suits her exceptionally well; her sister on the left is in a matching indigo number which makes her look like a skinny frozen blueberry; and the dark-haired boy on the right models a tuxedo in deep lavender. They look excellent. Courtiers orbit around them, hoping for the privilege of being humiliated for their amusement. No, what sets them apart is their internal bickering.

"I was fixing a seam on my best trousers, if you _must_ know. I don't trust the maids with my best." The boy looks put-upon. Despite being older, he retains some of the pubescent frustration that has passed the two girls by entirely.

"Aha! You can't prove that," says the central girl.

"Princess. It's a moot point. I don't bear grudges against anyone I can disarm in under a minute, see."

"Oh?" says the princess in question. "But Ianthe still saw you two fighting. And you're not upset he's dead at all, are you? Even though we knew the poor boy so well."

"We knew him, and he was a dick. Unbearable."

"Babs!" she says reproachfully.

"You aren't upset either, Corona," interjects the odd girl out. "We're all tremendously callous here."

"I never _said_ I was! Stay out of this, Ianthe! What I am," Coronabeth says, lowering her voice to even further levels of furious whisper, "is worried about Babs getting _caught!_ It's completely stupid! If he annoyed you so much why didn't you just challenge him to a duel and kill him legally?"

Naberius sighs. "I didn't do it, but," he says (a bad start to any sentence), "how about just being glad it happened? He was being such a slime to you both."

"He was a slime to her first, then gave up and switched to me," Ianthe corrects.

"And _there_ we have our motive. You're always using us as an excuse to do these stupid cavalier things."

"You know that's not how chivalry works," Naberius says, now truly offended. "You're not an excuse, you're the point. Don't see why you can't be happy about that too." Coronabeth makes an ugly face at him, though the effect is spoilt by her beautiful features, and he flinches and looks away.

The coffin is brought into the Royal Church and foisted onto the catafalque. It glitters in the light of a tremendous chandelier, and is illuminated from below by reflections off polished yellow stone. The procession gathers up into cliques amongst the pews, and a priest in white takes the pulpit to sermonise. Seated to Corona's left, Ianthe braids their hair together, yanking hard to make the three strands lie even. Seated to Corona's right, Naberius' face twitches in repressed pain as she grinds the point of her heel into his foot.

Once Thrice has been eulogised and verse has been read, they bow their heads summarily in prayer. Then the body goes back into storage, the champagne comes out, and the real funeral can get underway. Of course, the question on everybody's lips, couched in euphemism and flirtation, is _who did it, and why?_ There is talk that he was planning on competing with Anato Trifle for cavalier secondary, which might explain why the murder weapon was his own rapier; there is talk of a jilted lover on the Seventh pulling strings; there is talk of a disputed inheritance. Typical Third gossip. Nothing conclusive.

Corona, with Ianthe drifting at her elbow, makes the rounds of everyone important enough to expect a bit of chatter or a tasteful joke about falling on one's sword from a Princess of Ida before the end of the day. Naberius escapes to loiter with the few other noblemen present who like him - or at least fear him - but quickly finds them depressing. This was no blaze of glory on the front lines or assassination while on a diplomatic mission; it was plain murder, and the victim was someone they had been drinking or fencing with just a few days ago. Everyone here is well-bred enough to chatter as the occasion demands, but they're upset.

Ianthe corners him at the buffet and ruffles his hair out of place. "You know, Babs, I think my sister is genuinely angry with you," she says. "But don't worry! I can make sure she isn't too mean." _And I will, as long as you do what I say,_ is the unspoken part.

She smiles thinly. He forces the corners of his lips upward in return, loathing the derisory nature of her pleasure.

A week later a criminal psychometrist will arrive from the Sixth, and will report that Florian Thrice died by suicide: he arranged the crime scene, stabbed himself in the heart, and then threw himself on the ground to die. Although this doesn't match his psychological profile, there will be no evidence of foul play. In fact the psychometrist will be disgusted to have spent her time on excavating such blatant Third dramatics.

Of course, a sufficiently talented flesh magician might have been able to overpower him, puppet his body, and force him into doing the deed, all without leaving a trace - but there are only two necromancers on the palace grounds with that level of skill. And they're such lovely girls, always like a ray of sunshine in the room. Model princesses. And they had been friends with Thrice, hadn't they? No, it couldn't have been them. Of course not.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Third get some sort of Protestant Christian funeral before their party, since I imagine they'd *start* fairly conventional and therefore not so different to the one we see in Ht9. (quoting Teacher, the Third like to 'push the boundaries' and in fact I definitely should've gone weirder)  
> "Throne of Lenses" is a rip-off of the Throne of Hours from Sunless Skies. The Nine Houses would make a brilliant SSkies map, but the only trade goods would be depressing things like 'Coffer of Beaten Bones' or 'Tub of Blood'.


	2. The Master Templar of the White Glass

The death rites of the Master Templar begin in a small room lit with a bare bulb, at the centre of which is a shallow steel basin for bathing the dead. The Master's son, a slip of a boy with a mouth pressed thin and pale, has requested to oversee the ceremony personally. Others stand on, but he is the one to activate the machinery and recite the necessary prayers over the body. His clear voice reflects off the walls and ceiling of the tiny space, doubling, quadrupling, octupling the strength of the holy treatment.

Beneath, the soft corpse sheds its skin and foams yellow chunks of fat and streaks of rusty pink into the acid bath. The prayers are almost drowned out by the heavy throb of the high-strength solution being pumped in through the top grate, the irregular slosh and seethe as it sluices down, and the gurgle as it passes soiled through the bottom grate. The smell is even more biting and eye-watering than the many other cleaning smells that grace the Eighth's corridors.

It is vexing for an initiate of Order of the White Glass to see another in such a shameful state of undress. It is vexing to be reminded that people are basically meat interspersed with more meat. Despite this the boy manages to watch steadily, knowing that eventually his faith will be rewarded: eventually he will see the waters run pale and only disarticulated white bones will remain. That is as clean as a Brother can ever hope to be.

The next day marks the beginning of the funeral proper. The Master Templar is granted the ultimate honour, which is to have his bones incinerated to fine ash upon the fire of the Eightfold Light - the Holiest Fire, born from the combination of one flame from each of the Eight Houses, which has blazed both physically and thanergetically without interruption since the early days of the Eighth. The prayers will continue in the long term, in silence, with shift changes three times a day.

The Holiest Fire is currently absolutely chock-full of skeletons. There's been a surge of coffins from the front line, and those who die in service to the Eighth are meant to do so with the promise of immolation in the front of their mind. The Hall of the Flame is stuffed with their relations, and their body heat pollutes the room like a fever. Extra magnesium powder has to be heaped over the bones to keep the flame white. Silas does eight hours, and then one of Colum's overly healthy brothers comes to relieve him, but he resists the discomfort and does not move.

By the twelfth hour his body burns steadily with pain, but his pride flares brighter at the thought of giving up. He is shamefully pleased when his cavalier's yellowed face descends into his line of sight, but that still does not mean he will move.

"Brother Silas," Colum says gruffly. Some others turn at the sound, but quickly look back to the Light when they see who it is. "That's enough. Come to dinner."

"Brother - " Silas' disused voice breaks: even more turn around, and they look back even faster. His voice change is only just beginning, and unfortunately he has a full year of such ignominies ahead of him. "Brother Colum. To lead in exalting one of our number as they reach the conclusion of their duties to the Emperor and pass into the River is a privilege I will not squander. In many ways this is one of the high points of my life."

Colum glances around at one of the high points of Silas' life: a crowd of too many sad people standing around a big pit full of fire. He may be a devout, but it's become increasingly difficult for him to compete with Silas' depths of devotion.

"All right, but don't do it all at once," he says. "You'll get sick."

Silas is still young enough to be moved by the look of concern on his cavalier's face. He gives in and turns on his heel to go, forging past the pain and not even looking at whoever takes his place.

"It was horrible in there," he says, when they're out in the corridor. "It was warm. I saw Brothers with rosy cheeks."

"Well, you'll be Master in a few days," Colum says from his half-step behind, managing to sound totally apathetic about it. "You could arrange for it to be colder."

"A Master Templar does not - " Silas' voice breaks twice in succession here, making Colum and a passing acolyte of the Glass both badly need a drink of water - "change millennia-old tradition on a personal preference. In the best case, a Master Templar changes _nothing_ during his term of service."

"I know." Their footsteps, perpetually out of time, squeak off the polished stone floor. Colum can remember a time when Silas was about waist high, taking four steps to his every two, and had wanted to make all sorts of changes to the Temple; it had been so endearing. He'd helped discourage that line of thought, not liking to see the child unhappy.

"My late father set an excellent example in that aspect," Silas continues meditatively. "It would be a blemish upon his memory were I to not follow it. Do you mourn him?"

"What?"

"My father; your grandfather. Do you mourn him?"

Colum, ultimately, is a not a man made for sensitivity. "No, Uncle, I can't say I do."

"Nor I," Silas says. "And yet it is our duty to pray for him, and to honour him."

"Yes, Uncle."

"I suppose it'll be the same for me someday," he adds. Purely an observation. Behind him Colum flinches; he proceeds steadily as ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I adore the Eighth. Other Houses can only dream of being as hilariously awful and bereft of joy as any ONE of Silas Colum or Mercymorn.  
> The funeral and Eightfold Light here were inspired by Parsi funeral rites and fire temples, though the only thing lifted directly was the idea of a constantly burning fire formed from combining other special fires. It wasn't an intelligent choice, I just happened to read an article about them recently.


	3. Cytherea the First

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gets the warning for descriptions of mental illness, and maybe gaslighting now I think about it. Major spoilers for Harrow the Ninth!  
> eta: been rereading some of Gideon and realised I goofed GRIEVOUSLY on Cytherea so this has been edited

You shouldn't have visited Cytherea's coffin. She was a traitor. But you did. And you shouldn't have mourned; you had been mourning for a myriad already and it only got in the way. But you did.

Visuals-wise, her funeral had been quintessential Seventh. Or, it hadn't - you no longer knew the state of the world, and perhaps their customs had changed. It had seemed correct: the open casket, the luminous candles, the roses unblown, the beauty so exquisite you did not know how to process or respond to it. What set it apart, thankfully, was the absence of gentle weeping, prayer, poetry recitals, singing, et cetera. The Seventh would never have stood on ceremony if they could put on a production instead.

The corpse becoming an art installation afterward, that was more unusual. It was ridiculous. Any soldier of the Second could tell you there was value in a clean cut. But Cytherea might have liked it - not being locked away out of sight in a fancy tomb, but instead remaining as a tragedy you were forced to remember constantly, as chronic to the rest of you as her cancer had been to her.

She had been kind to you - only God himself had been kinder. She became lodged in the cycle of your thoughts. Once, after waking with carapaces and gunshots cracking in your ears, you got up and went to the little room. You were preoccupied with that sleeping face, framed by roses and sweet curls. You wished you remembered more of her wit and grace; you hoped you would forget her betrayal.

Sitting there with the door shut tight behind you, you remembered a scene from the aftermath of an RB. The one you lost Cass to maybe. You had been convalescing from Herald sickness - you weren't sure Cyth had even known you were awake, so long had you been lying there paralyzed with terror, but she had been singing some nursery rhyme at your bedside. Maybe as a joke. It was funny. A lullaby for a soldier who was two metres tall and ninety-four percent lean body mass. You hadn't been able to understand her cough-hoarse and melodious voice, but it had been exactly what you needed; you had rested, without dreams, for the first time in a week.

You tried to hum the tune again now as some inadequate tribute to her. You'd always been hopelessly tone-deaf, though, with a voice like a brick, and, well, after a few verses frankly you deserved it when Cytherea's corpse twisted its head to stare at you in pure hatred.

A frenzied heartbeat later you were on top of the body, bearing down, the length of your spear forced cruelly against the soft pallid curve of her throat. You stayed like that for a long time, your blood beating hard against your insides in the vacuumlike silence. Cytherea's eyes were shut, their long lashes still against her cheeks. There was no breath, no resistance. You had no evidence for what you had seen.

You leapt up and backed away, feeling an agonising shame at having disturbed a single atom of her serenity. Again you could not be trusted - you, the Saint of Duty, could not be trusted. Dead people could not open their eyes. You went back to your room, locked and double-locked and double-warded the door, and folded up on the floor into one hard knuckle of tension. John had already told you - too often and too well-intentioned - that not all of your obsessions mattered and that not all your worries were rational.

Now you couldn't even be left alone with a corpse. You would never go back there again. You would excise her from your thoughts.

You didn't actually deserve to lose her that way. It was a joke. I wish you could still laugh at my jokes, even if you do have a laugh like two bricks knocked together. Or at Cyth's. Hers were much funnier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ht9's trio of brutal hardasses give me life

**Author's Note:**

> This is all for now, I have ideas for the Second and Fourth too but I'm not sure whether I'll succeed in writing them so I'm publishing early. I'm currently in Locked Tomb mode 24/7, feel free to hmu @goldgust on twitter!


End file.
